


Can My Destiny Be To Change It?

by im_ashamed



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, F/M, Modern Era, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22154614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_ashamed/pseuds/im_ashamed
Summary: Kagome returns to the feudal era, settles down with Inuyasha, and passes away.A few hundred years later Kouga meets Kagome before all that and decides he has another chance to change it.Updated/edited version of a previous work.
Relationships: Ayame/Kouga (InuYasha), Higurashi Kagome/Kouga
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a complete re-write of 'What Is It If Not Destiny?', so you don't have to read that for this to make sense. 
> 
> Long story short, I always meant to go back and polish that story. I really like it, but never thought it was my best work.  
> Now it's four years later and I couldn't bring myself to just do a small edit. I have, however, left the original version up. I got some very nice comments on it and it really upsets me when something just disappears off of the internet. 
> 
> Also, It’s implied that the entirety of Inuyasha (a comic that ran for over ten years) happens in Kagome’s first year of high school. Here the events of the series happen during Kagome’s first, second, and into the beginning of her third year. 
> 
> Also also, you can follow me on twitter @sheepydraws if you want to know when I have new fic up.

Sometimes, when he was riding through the city, Kouga would look at the sky scrapers, the glittering cars, the countless people, and ask himself if anything had changed. Sometimes he went to museums and asked himself how the world could have been so different. Sometimes he heard a woman shriek, or boisterous laughter, or a bass boosted song boasting of some man’s uncountable conquests, and he felt like time was a lie we told to keep all these repetitions from running together like syrup on a melting snow cone.

Kouga idly revved his ignition at a red light, earning a nasty look from a middle aged woman on a mommy bike in the next lane. He’d shoot her a grin to mollify her, but she would probably remember it as a sneer once the light changed and he left her in the dust.

Kouga didn’t think he’d changed much. He still liked the pure rush of going fast. He might not have jewel shards in his legs, but unlike a human he could tear around on his bike consequence-free. No helmet, no jacket, just the breeze on his face and the thrum of the motor between his legs. It was coffee compared to the cocaine of the jewel, but he enjoyed it all the same.

He was just grateful he was here to enjoy it. Okay, some things had changed. He’d already outlived his father and grandfather by a few hundred years. Clean cities, modern medicine, it did wonders, even for demons. Though who was to say demons hadn’t helped it happen?

Kouga took the next turn hard, his knee skimming the ground. In a few more blocks he’d be out of the city center, free to really let the throttle out. He was racing for it, racing for the run. This weekend was going to be a long one at the pack house in Isumi, near the beach. Funny how money piled up over the centuries.

The plan for the next few days? Run along the beach, mess around in the ocean, eat till he ached.

Kouga nearly swerved directly into a mailbox.

He’d never _stopped_ so fast he heard burning rubber. There were honks behind him, distant curses. Sounded like they were coming from miles back.

Kouga parked his bike, hooked an anti-theft charm over the handles and followed the scent. He went by instinct, hooked by something vaguer than sensation. The shikon jewel had more of a presence than a smell, but it was such an assault to the senses that even now, nearly intangible, he could detect it. Pure and clear, like air in the mountains on a frosty morning, cold enough to burn straight through your lungs.

Kouga could have followed it with his eyes closed, but they were wide open, darting through the crowd. Where was it coming from? How could this be?

He spotted her half a block away, on the other side of the street. He must have blown straight past her before he sensed the jewel. Objective in sight, Kouga’s single minded pursuit ended. He could hear the chug of traffic, the dull noise of passerby, feel the hammering of his heart in his ears.

It was a good thing she was across the street. If he had tripped over her he probably wouldn’t have been able to contain himself. He would have jumped on top of her, knocked her to the pavement and—What? Bitten her? Fucked her?

It wasn’t even Kagome. There was a resemblance, from the color of her hair, right down to the uniform, but Kouga couldn’t lie to himself. It couldn’t be her, right? He’d buried her hundreds of years ago.

But she’d been from another land hadn’t she? A world with…with backpacks. And potato chips. And final exams!

The pavement went uneven, and the light shining through the skyscrapers undulated like it was flowing underwater. Kouga had never fainted in his life, but for this he was prepared to change his ways.

The last hint of the jewel’s scent teased Kouga’s nose. It was like the ozone of fresh snow on his tongue. A parting taste. The girl was about to vanish into the crowd.

Kouga ran. Running in the middle of Tokyo was like playing tag in a gallery of statues. Even the cars barely moved when Kouga truly did.

He went around an entire building, praying she wouldn’t make an unexpected turn. He wound up leaning against a restaurant, casually watching a group of school girls walk towards him.

Kouga peeled himself off the bricks and gave the girls his most charming smile.

“Excuse me,” He said, sounding as sweet and gentle as he could, “Is one of you a Miss. Higurashi?”

The girls hesitated. His questions sounded earnest, not like some saccharine come-on. They were caught between the lessons of avoiding strange men and not being rude to nice ones.

“There’s a Higurashi in my class,” One of the girls said. She had a bad perm, a frayed uniform, and the soft equanimity of a women who carries pure power within her. “But he’s a guy.”

“A very cute guy,” One of the other girls said, with a knowing elbow.

“Stop it,” Kagome’s mother-who else could she be?-squealed playfully.

The girl threw her arm around Kagome’s mother’s neck and shot Kouga a grin. “Come back in a few years, and maybe you’ll find _Mrs_. Higurashi.”

Kouga smiled back at her, but bit his tongue. He wanted to be smug, but this was not the moment for snappy comebacks or reckless words. He had learned some restraint in the last few centuries.

“Thank you, ladies,” He said, and bowed briefly, leaving the encounter just oddly enough that they wouldn’t know what to make of it.

He ran all the way to Isumi beach. He ran for the pure joy of it, to feel the wind on his face and the road under his feet. If any humans saw him, he was gone the next instant. They would assure themselves that they couldn’t possibly have seen a man running seventy miles an hour along the concrete wall at the side of the freeway.

Such things-men who moved faster than buses, women with the power to rend the world or put it to rights with a flick of her wrist, second chances at true love-were merely figments in stories.


	2. Chapter 2

Years pass more quickly as you age. Kouga and Ayame have stayed up nights debating why. They stay up debating the debates. They line up all the years of their life and recount them carefully to each other. Their lives can’t be written down. Anyone who found them would think they were carefully researched fiction (or perhaps not-so-carefully researched. Odd what becomes fact and what is fiction a hundred years later) but the true impediment is their sheer length. The fact that as the years pass, the language changes. Words that were common become obscure, and without them the story is twisted and forgotten.

“Okay,” Ayame says, half-asleep. Kouga can hear her fumbling out of her clothes. “I talked to Shibori, and they’re willing to stay away from the Isumi terf, as long as we continue to forget about the mountain incident, and their beachfront houses which may or may not be near Kobe.”

“Suma?”

“I forget.”

There is a rustle of fabric and a groan. She probably flopped down on the bed face first. Ayame loves to do that on hotel beds.

Kouga glances out the window. Ayame is up in Hokkiado, near Wakkanai, dealing with some bullshit from a clan of snake demons that they’ve been in shit with for…fifty years? A hundred? The snakes latest leader wants to shed their skin, make a new start. Not possible when memories run this long, but still an admirable effort.

Ayame rattles off more outcomes and ultimatums from the talks, while Kouga wonders if the jewel is responsible. Even in a condo in the middle of Tokyo he can feel the thrum of power pervading the city. He may not be able to pinpoint the jewel like Kagome, but it is a hard sensation to miss when you know it so well.

It is like a fingernail just barely grazing down his spine, the sort of non-touch that makes every hair stand on end. Normally Kouga would see it as a leader’s duty to attend diplomatic talks, but he would have been useless. Reckless, irritable, even now he wants to run up there, wrestle that snake to the ground, tell him if he wants to bend like a bitch, he’ll have to take it like one.

All that power is out there, hovering just beyond his reach. All he has to do is stretch out his hands, fingers spread wide and grasping, nails curled wickedly, ready to take it all even if he has to tear it out bleeding.

“Is it cold down there?” Ayame asks.

Actually, Kouga is hot, sweating under his furs. He kicks the blankets off and stalks out of his bedroom, yanking open the balcony door and slamming it behind him.

“Was that the balcony?” Ayame shifts with a little grunt. “Did you just wake everyone up?”

“It’s not that late, and most of them are in the other apartment.” The pack still lives communally, though such things are harder to explain when most people live separately in tiny apartments rather than seeing a good cave as a coup worth sharing.

Kouga leans against the balcony railing, sucking in tepid air. He needs the kind of cold that stops you mid-thought. He needs the air to reach inside him and suck the heat out of his blood. He’s sweaty, almost feverish. Ayame is in his ear, recounting some tete-a-tete she had with a snake woman, but her words couldn’t reach Kouga’s mind.

He wants to see Kagome so badly. He has to prove to himself that she really is here. He can’t believe it. He went to her grave, for godssake. Helped put the half-breed in the groundtwo hundred years later, too. By then even some demons had forgotten a time so tumultuous it would go down in history as the warring states period.

Kouga thought he had forgotten too, but at his first whiff of that scent on the wind it all came back to him, crashing over his senses like the spray of a waterfall, blocking sound and thought and even feeling beyond the pounding pressure.

He’s been to the temple a few times, and boy was it a shock to see that tree. He could feel the past just under his feet. The fields have been paved over, the forests now home to a jangle of skyscrapers, but when he closed his eyes he could see the rolling hills, could plot their gentle rise and fall in all directions, towards the ocean and the land that had once been a small town and was now a city throbbing with people.

He knew better than to try and see Kagome. She didn’t know him before they saw each other in the past, so she can’t know him now. That past must currently be in her future, and it makes him a little dizzy, trying to chart the courses of their lives, seeing how closely their ships passed one night, realizing how near they are again.

“Hun?”

Kouga blinks. The city lights burn and streak around his eyes. “What?”

“You were so quiet I thought we broke up.”

“No, no, I’m right here. Just listening.”

“Good. So you can make the reservations?”

“Of course.”

“Great! Thank you sweetie, I’m sure she’ll love it. I’ll be home by two tomorrow. Give yourself a kiss for me.”

That’s Ayame’s favorite way to sign off. Even when she’s just being sweet it comes off as flirty to Kouga, and when she’s in the right mood, she’ll pitch it sultry. Today, it’s irritating. Just another dumb thing she’s been saying to him for almost a hundred years.

Kouga almost doesn’t feel bad when he realizes he had no idea who he was supposed to make reservations with. 


	3. Chapter 3

After a long, sweaty, sleepless night, which left him unable to do anything but admit he hadn’t heard a word Ayame said, and the restaurant was booked up so the pack couldn’t get in—Maybe the cold shoulder Ayame gave him was the frosty blast Kouga needed.

After leaving some protective charms around the temple (big ones, the sort you have to bury three feet deep and forget about for twenty years) Kouga managed to put the jewel from his mind.

He is in the Isumi house, propped up on the couch, Ginta at his feet. Haruki is curled up on the floor as a wolf. It’s getting kind of late. The pups are in bed, Ayame is in the kitchen with Momo, chatting.

Kouga is idly flipping channels, killing time. There is a rush of water in the background as Ayame turns on the dishwasher. Now all she had left to do is scrub down the counters. Kouga is waiting for her to emerge from the kitchen, hopefully a little sweaty with small locks of hair curling at her nape.

“Holy shit, wait, go back,” Ginta says, interrupting Kouga’s slightly fevered anticipation.

Kouga blinks and flips back a few channels, until his eyes catch on what Ginta saw.

Kouga’s jaw drops. A a soft ‘Fuck’ falls out.

Unkillable, the closest demon to possess the shikon jewel, captor of Kagome’s heart-the Hanyo Houdini is back with one last fabulous trick. He’s risen from the grave, and is plastered across their television.

The camera man is more invested in capturing the huge, murky monster Inuyasha is trying to take down, but there is no mistaking that particular silver blur.

And there, in his arms.

Kagome.

“Is that who I think it is?”

Kouga startles. Ayame is leaning over the back of the couch, fingers clenched in the dusky purple fabric. It’s impossibly plush, but Ayame’s claws are sinking in because they are tearing right through it.

Ayame’s eyes snap to Kouga’s. They’re luminous in any light, but they remind him too much of Sadako and her scary movie in the flickering glow of the television.

“Did you know?” The words ghost across her lips, almost completely unsaid.

Kouga hesitates, and for Ayame that is more than enough.

“You knew!” She screams

That particular pitch sends people running. It is the sort of sound you feel in your gut. Something is wrong. Something is about to go down.

“I didn’t!” Kouga yells back, leaping to his feet. “I mean, I didn’t _know._ It’s been almost three hundred _years._ You think I keep track?!”

Too late. Kouga can see the dawn rising on Ayame’s face. Kagome has been in the past for so long, and the two girls were never on great terms, but everything is rushing back to her and clicking into place. Kagome’s uniform, her strange medicine, the slang she used-Kagome wasn’t a strange visitor from a strange land, she was a strange visitor from the future. This future.

Ayame’s eyes go wide, a new realization taking hold, one too important for her to contain. “The jewel! It must be-it’s here isn’t it?” She grips the couch again, looking for support.

“Ayame, it’s fine.” Kouga reaches for her hand.

She snatches it away, taking some stuffing along with it. “Do you know what kind of danger we’re in? I may have been young, but I remember that fucking jewel. Everyone who went anywhere near it lost their damn minds! Oh my god, they already have! That’s why all the Tengu are coming off the mountains like a goddamn avalanche, isn’t it? Or the Kasa-Obake practically abandoning that house-You knew!”

“How could I have known?” Kouga’s voice is too loud to his ears, overcompensating for the audience they’d attracted.

“You know better than anyone how the jewel feels! You had it inside you, you practically got inside Kagome, how could you not know the second it resurfaced?”

That’s no proof, but her words were too true to argue.

Ayame’s face is so red Kouga can see numbers clicking across her cheeks. If he wants to diffuse the situation, he has to pull back. Go as cool as Ayame is hot.

Kouga forces his shoulders to relax. He puts his voice at an even, almost joking, keel.

“Is that what this is about?” He glances at the rest of the pack. They adopt human mannerisms when it suits them, but at the moment they are a hairsbreadth from shedding their skin and howling their approval of the fight. All this civility makes them so anxious that even a little squabble can raise their bloodlust to the surface.

“What?” Ayame says, confusion dulling her anger.

“Maybe you still are that little girl I carried up the mountain. Getting jealous over a woman whose, what, one millionth your age?”

Ayame snatches a lamp off the end table, the cord snapping right out of the base. It arches through the air. A thousand years pass before it even gets close enough to be worth dodging.

Kouga does so deftly, then vaults over the couch. He is behind Ayame before she can react, but once she does he takes an elbow to the jaw. His head snaps up, but her still grabs her arm, twists it behind her back, and throws his other arm around her chest.

A second later she is on her knees. Kouga bent over her, his back to her chest, holding her down.

Kouga gets to take one slow, steadying breath. No, Ayame’s never been a calm one, but really, you just have to-

She screams like her soul is being torn out, and with some god-given thigh strength she flips both of them over, smashing Kouga into the ground. The wind knocked from him, his hold on her loosens. She gets just far enough away to swing around and deck him in the throat.

Even Kouga’s speed is useless when he can’t breathe. He takes a punch to the face, and then another, and another.

Ayame is saying something he could only partially hear over the smack of flesh on flesh and the pain sparking over his bones.

“-in danger! Again, you fucking idiot, you left us out to dry, just so that you could fuck-“ Something sticks in Ayame’s throat. She hesitates, just long enough for Kouga to pull his foot back and make a solid connection with her chest. For a second his sole is pressed to her sternum, their skin separated by only the thin cotton of her T-shirt. For one moment Koga could swear he can feel her flesh, her ribs, her beating heart.

Ayame slides across the floor till she hits the kitchen wall. Kouga scrabbles back, putting enough distance between them to get upright. _Jesus fuck_ , He thinks, _I can’t fight Ayame. I might hurt her._

The throbbing in his face would like to question that statement, but he doesn’t have time to debate. He goes for the window. Ginta catches the edge of Koga’s shirt, but he shrugs him off.

“It’s fine,” He says, words mostly thrown over his shoulder, “It’ll be fine. Just gotta cool down.”

Then he’s out the window with just enough momentum off the ledge to get him past the house.

He has never told anyone that the shards in his legs left scars. A little indentation where there is no flesh. Sometimes, if he runs hard and fast and far enough, his muscles throb around the place where the jewels used to be. Taunting him, reminding him that he’ll never go as fast as he did with them inside him. He’ll never be as powerful as he could have been with that jewel.

Honest sweat, a hard days work—those are just empty platitudes for people who have never felt what it is to run past the horizon and back again.


	4. Chapter 4

Fall comes. Ayame’s anger does not cool. Kouga hasn’t seen her in months. Hakkaku texted him a few days after the phantom incident, saying that Ayame left a bunch of his stuff at the main Tokyo house. He was extended the right to enter the house only to retrieve it.

Kouga considered swanning into the house and plopping down himself in the front room with the sort of swagger that dared people to questions him. Wasn’t he the leader of this damn pack? Hadn’t he been the leader nigh on three hundred years? Who was Ayame to extend him a privilege to enter his own house?

Then again, he’d been in charge for three hundred years. Let Ayame have a turn, see how she liked it. Hell, he’d earned this break.

Kouga holed up in a little apartment they kept for special occasions, mostly of the birth, death, and honeymoon variety. Ayame thought she sounded real high and mighty, ‘extending him a privilege’ but she wasn’t willing to wield that power. All his credit cards still worked, and it was no secret where he was staying. After the first few days Kouga felt pretty comfortable about his situation. At least, when he doesn’t think about the ringing silence of being alone for the first time in his life.

He has math to distract him. He doesn’t quite remember when that phantom incident occurred, if he even heard of it at all. But if Kagome had the shard, and Inuyasha was in her life…and then there was that time-A year?- when she wasn’t around…

Kouga continues to fret about the timing, but he also spends a lot of time sleeping, reading books he’s been putting off, and eating the good instant noodles that always seem to go missing if he brings them home. He runs all over Japan for the hell of it.

It’s been a long time since he fell asleep on a patch of grass in the middle of the day and did not have to explain his absence. For a while he makes a point of not even looking at clocks. He has no appointments to keep, no one else’s schedule he needs to worry about.

One day he wakes up, does a load of laundry, and decides it’s time to stop messing around.

He gets to her school just as she’s getting out for the day. Not planned, not expected, just perfect.

There she is.

The reality of her is stunning. It’s not like looking at the sun, it’s like the sun has swooped to earth to look at him.

He can see her coming, and the moment crystalizes around her steps. Kouga thought this was all lost to him, an absolute impossibility.

If it is possible, how can this be anything other than fate, than destiny, a moment that was meant to be?

Her eyes go wide. “Kouga?”

He grins. “Hey.”

She runs up to him, extends her hands as though she might touch him, and he steps into her reach. “But the well is closed. How…?” She says, searching his face for answers.

“It’s been a while,” Kouga says. He is proficient in the art of saying enough to answer a question without voicing anything that would disturb a mortal eavesdropper.

Kagome glances at the group of girls behind her who have taken up whispering among themselves, sending pointed looks to Kouga’s bike.

“Let’s go,” Kouga says, patting the handle bars. “Can’t go as fast as I used to, but I do get around in style.”

Kagome laughs, her eyes alight, and tells her friends not to wait for her. She accepts the helmet he gives her, and throws her arms around his waist. He revs the engine, once, twice, and takes off. It’s not just like old times. It’s better. It’s real, and it’s now, and it might just be the future.


	5. Chapter 5

Fall blurs by. Kouga remembers autumns when he watched each leave change color individually. This year he is only vaguely aware of cooling weather and rising color.

He spends his time taking care of whatever duties Ayame sends his way through four or five intermediaries (go butter up this politician who thinks we’re yakuza, go growl at these fools who think we’re weak yakuza) in between hours and hours whiled away at Kagome’s.

It was never like this before. They talk for hours, catching up on the demons she knew, swapping stories from the feudal years, chatting about all the things she loves that she could never share when saying the words “electro funk” to him would only elicit a blank stare.

The silence is nice too, though. The calm. Kouga has the luxury of spending more than one afternoon stretched out on Kagome’s bed, dozing, while her pencil scratches through her notebooks.

Kouga’s phone buzzes, and he fishes it out of his pocket without opening his eyes.

“What’s that?” Kagome asks, glancing over her shoulder.

Kouga glances at the screen. “My second.” Looks like a long text. Probably some lame job, like picking up fake IDs or dealing with a realtor. Kouga sticks the phone back into his pocket.

“Your what?”

“You know,” Kouga sits up and works a kink out of his shoulder. “Second in command. I’m still head of my pack, you know.” Sorta.

Kagome puts her head on one side. “Oh, wow, I can’t even picture that. You all still live together?”

“Yeah, we got- we got a bunch of houses.” Kouga hesitates to specify the Tokyo house, because then he might have to explain why he isn’t exactly welcome there. “There’s a lot more of us, too.”

Kagome’s brow furrows. “You know, I never really wondered but…Is it hard for demons to have kids?”

The words are a shot in the arm. Heat hits him from one side, cold rushes over the other. There is a crash and a hiss of steam as they meet in the middle.

“Yeah,” Kouga says, hoping he sounds nonchalant, “It can be really difficult, especially since we age so slowly compared to humans.”

Kagome swivels slowly from side to side in her desk chair. “I guess that’s good for us humans, though. You’d probably have overtaken us a long time ago, otherwise.”

Ayame said something like that once. Or. Well.

She said, “It’s like an exchange. It’s just fair, I guess. Every fucking human woman on the street has a baby, whether she likes it or not, and I get to _run_ really fast-“ And then her shaking voice broke completely.

Kouga doesn’t want to think about that right now. Not Ayame crying. Not holding her. Not that particular dark night of the soul, broken only by a old fluorescent light and the scent of bug repellant incense. Singular, but like countless other nights they shared.

If sometimes their problems were repetitive, that was only because they saw no ways to fix them. Some nights that made it worse.

“Is that pack still the same?” Kagome asks, “The same people?”

Kouga forces himself to laugh. He refuses to let those thoughts cloud this sunny afternoon. “You’d be surprised by how little some of them have changed.”

Kagome spins her chair in a full circle, then stamps her foot to come to a stop. “Is it bad if I, like, barely remember them?” She throws her head back and scrubs her hands down her face. “Ughhh, it hasn’t even been that long, but the only person I can think of is Ayame.” Kagome drops her hands and frowns. “Whatever happened to her?”

Kouga shrugs. “She’s around.” He touches the phone in his pocket, half expecting it to buzz.

Kagome gets off her desk chair and plops down on her bed bedside Kouga in that cute girly way where sitting down, tucking in her skirt, and kicking out her leg is all one fluid movement.

“Didn’t she want to marry you?”

It is no idle question. Or perhaps it is, but it sounds different when Kagome is right next to him, almost shoulder to shoulder. He should be overwhelmed with her scent, but all that’s reaching his nose is the artificial tang of fruity shampoo and the alcoholic whine of flowery perfume. She’s probably using the same brands as she did in the past, but back then they would wear down, just traces that gave her scent layers he couldn’t find on anyone else.

It’s familiar, and strange at the same time, and Kouga’s phone buzzes on his thigh, right where their legs are almost touching.

“Shit,” Kouga mutters, because he never gets a double text unless it’s important. The screen says he needs to reply right now. “I have to go.”

The hurt in Kagome’s eyes…now, that’s new.

Kouga pauses. They’re facing each other, their knees touching, although their thighs aren’t. He can just barely feel her breath on his face.

If she asked him to stay, he would.

Her eyes drop back to her skirt. “Yeah, you should probably get going.”

Kouga stands and wraps his fist around the phone. He knows he should leave. If he’s going to go around believing in the inevitable, he has to respect the force that’s dragging him towards the door.

But he looks at Kagome and says, “About Ayame…Some things just never work out.”

He’s still analyzing the look in her eyes hours later, at the smoke filled room of their false ID guy. Not starstruck or excited, no, a little too scared to be excited.

Maybe Kouga's being sentimental, maybe he’s being ridiculous, but maybe what she was feeling is the same sensation fluttering against his ribs. It warps the burning cigarette smoke into fine cologne, making the whirr of the laminator the opening strings of a symphony.

Maybe they’re both in hope.


	6. Chapter 6

That is the beginning of the end, as far as Kouga is concerned. He isn’t totally sure what a paradigm shift is, but every time he steps into a room with Kagome in it, the walls tip with his steps and fling him towards her.

Suddenly she’s always sitting next to him. Wearing skirts on her day off, and this cute white sweater with a completely innocent row of eyelets that just happen to coast along the curve of her cleavage.

One day they’re walking around downtown, supposedly to check out all the cute decorations. Not at all because they’re one a date. Except what else do you call it as the sun is setting, making the gajillion fairy lights strung up all over town glow even brighter, and you’re both walking so close your shoulders keep bumping into each other?

They pass a sparsely decorated tree, a concrete bench wrapped around its base. Three couples sit equidistant from each other on it, all of them wearing the sort of soft, happy expressions that make it clear these lights, the cool air, the festive furor infecting the city-it was laid out just for them.

“Okay,” Kagome says, clapping her mittened hands together as though it’s decided. “I cannot feel my face.”

Kouga bursts out laughing. “You want to get some coffee?”

“What an idea! You’re a genius, you know that?” Kagome says as she links her arm through Kouga’s and starts pulling him towards the cafe she’s already picked out.

Kouga is laughing, not sure why, as this tiny human girl drags him along. She isn’t daunted by him for a second is she? She’s like December air, cold enough to shock, but full of excitement. There is promise on the icy wind.

“Kagome, wait,” Kouga gasps, so giddy he’s pretty sure he’s going to float straight off the pavement.

Kagome turns back to him, opens her mouth, to say ‘what’ or ‘why’ or some other banal word everyone has said a billion times. Kouga kisses her before it can escape. And okay, maybe kissing has been done a billion times, too, but how many first kisses are there? How many first kisses that someone has waited three hundred years for?

Kouga pictured it a thousand ways-in pouring rain on the top of a mountain, screaming his heart out-but there is nothing in fantasy or fiction that feels better than this simple, easy kiss. She softens instantly underneath him, and stays close and warm and perfect.

The kiss doesn’t so much end as fade softly till she is just leaning against him, her chest pressed to his, her hands curled in his pockets. Kouga’s breath escapes him in a cloud of steam just above her head. He buries his face in her hair and sighs.

Standing up on a frigid evening in the middle of a busy street. He’s never been so comfortable.

Kagome pulls away enough to face him. “So. Coffee. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”


	7. Chapter 7

The Tokyo pack house is kind of a mess. They bought it cheap post-war, so its a pretty traditional Japanese house, except for the spots where someone said, fuck it, and decided to start growing exotic flowers in what used to be a spare bathroom, or just jammed the wires for a tv into the woodwork.

There’s a scorched spot on one of the wrap-around porches where a brazier gave its life for a particularly inspired mix of magic and kerosene (The resulting blast did, in fact, warm the entire house as desired, but only for about six seconds).

To say the house looks lived in would be something of an understatement. The floors are lighter in patches where the wood had to be replaced after years of claw-footed traffic scarred the boards to the heart. The sliding doors have been replaced so many times that some of them have been taken off completely, and those that ‘aren’t broke enough to be worth fixing’ are mostly duct tape held together with patches of washi paper and the fractured outline of a wooden frame.

Lately Ayame has been going around saying they should just burn this place down, fake all their deaths, and start over.

“Or we could, just, get a handyman or whatever,” Ginta says from where he’s lying on the couch. Ayame just shouted her statement after realizing that the door to the coat closet has started sticking.

“It’s fucking endless!” Ayame grunts as she wrestles on her jacket. “And every goddamn time we call someone in we’ve got to walk on eggshells around them, hope the pups don’t get any bright ideas about showing the nice man some tricks…” She throws the front door open and stalks off, still muttering. It’s miserable outside, cold, grey, and sludgy, but Ayame volunteered to go out and get milk and bread for breakfast.

She’s been anxious. Pacing a lot. Flying off the handle at the slightest thing. She doesn’t actually yell _at_ anyone or work her anger out on anything more than an already busted door. Maybe that’s worse. She was all calm and cold after Kouga left. Lately, she’s scalding to the touch.

“You think she’ll really cut his credit cards?” Hakkaku calls from the kitchen. Ah, the joys of an ‘open plan’ (read: there was a wall separating the kitchen and the living room, but someone got a little too excited about dinner in their wolf form. It was easier to just cut out the busted bit than try and fix the whole wall).

Ginta rolls off the couch and comes over to lean on a kitchen counter. “I think she just wants him to come back.”

Hakkaku sighs and gives the curry a half-hearted stir. “This is fucking ridiculous. I never thought we’d have to go through this again.”

Ginta laughs. “This isn’t even ‘again’, this is so much worse.”

His words hang heavy over the kitchen.

It’s such a complicated thing. All that Kagome stuff was in the past, but now it’s in the present, and what the fuck does the future even look like?

“Do you think she’ll…go back?”

Hakkaku leaves the curry to simmer and comes to lean on the other side of the counter, facing Ginta. “She has to, right? I mean…” He shakes his head, trying to clear the fog of years. “She _has_ to. We saw it. She came back, she and the half-breed settled down, they had like, five kids…It’s already happened.”

“But that’s all in the past,” Ginta tries to say with a smile. His words don’t uncrease Hakkaku’s brow. “Hey,” He says, reaching for that furrow. “What’s wrong?”

Hakkaku bows his head, leaning into Ginta’s touch. “I don’t know. I miss him, and if I miss him, I can’t imagine how Ayame feels, and then I thought, fuck, how would I feel if you left me from some teenage shrine maiden?”

A burst of laughter escapes Ginta. “Sorry, sorry,” He says, though Hakkaku is smiling now, “I just- _me_ , with a shrine maiden. A _human,_ it’s-“ His laughter gets the best of him again, and the next thing he knows, both he and Hakkaku are laid out on the counter, laughing themselves sick.

The front door bangs shut, and they both jump to attention.

“I got that brand you like,” Ayame calls from the hall.

“Did you run?” Ginta asks as she tosses her grocery bag on the counter.

“Yeah, of course.” Ayame sniffles a bit, her face red from cold and exertion. She hasn’t taken her coat off. “I’m going to take a nap. Don’t call me for dinner, okay? I’m tired.”

Ginta and Hakkaku watch her go, then they don’t. Their eyes search every corner of the room till they meet again.

Ayame may be as out of sorts as she can be without being out of her mind, but she’s keeping the pack running. She’s the one whose putting on a good face, telling all the other demons that share Tokyo the way aggressive commuters share a crowded train that this little group is stable, that they are not to be leaned on or picked at.

“Do you think, if he comes back, that she’ll let him?”

Hakkaku is silent a moment, then he cracks his neck violently and turns around to check on the rice cooker. “When he comes back, we’ll support whatever decision she makes as the leader.”


	8. Chapter 8

Kagome has been oscillating between being excited for graduation, being terrified of graduation, and crashing from late night study sessions.

It’s a relief to just be hanging around at the mall. Kagome wants a new dress for graduation, something simple, sweet, but nice. Kouga’s never liked malls much. They’re weirdly bright and smell like cheap metal and a dozen different types of detergent. But what fool would pass up the chance to help Kagome in and out of a million different dresses?

It’s like a magic trick, or maybe a music video with particularly provocative choreography. The dress goes up, her shoulders disappear as her thighs come into view, then another dress comes down, covering the lace of her bra and then her panties. Pivot in front of the mirror, pronounce it an utter failure, strip, repeat.

There’s a steady rhythm to Kagome’s shopping, a loping aspect to her gate that Kouga can feel when he puts his hand on the small of her back.

Kagome stops in front of a particularly promising window and leans into his arm as she considers the dress on one of the mannequins. Kouga relaxes, and it aches a bit, as though he’s been carrying that tension for a while. He frowns, searching his memory, trying to understand-right. Ayame. His pack. They were quite the bubble, weren’t they? It’s hard to be scared of anything, to even feel that low level anxiety of being surrounded by strangers, when you have five ancient demons with you.

“Okay,” Kagome finally says, “I’m going to try it on.” 

Kouga kisses the top of her head just as she slips out of his arms.

The dress does, in fact, have too many rhinestones. It looked low-key on the mannequin, but on Kagome it’s clearly the sort of sparkly form-fitter meant for an awards show, not a high school graduation.

“It is kind of amazing, though,” Kagome says, arms up, twirling in front of the mirror. The spangles meant to hang low on her shoulders, practically at her biceps, fly up and flow in the same pattern as her hair.

“You make it amazing,” Kouga says.

She laughs and rolls her eyes. “You’re too much.” She slips back into the dressing room, and Kouga glances up and down the aisle. This store has the dressing rooms tucked away in the back, behind an alcove of handbags. It’s a quiet Wednesday afternoon.

Kouga slumps against the wall. He’s tired, something about the fluorescents getting into his eyes. Kagome’s scent is on his nose, fatigue is in his bones, and a memory washes over him.

They were sitting on a hill, two of Kagome’s kids wrestling their way down the slope. She was already enormous with her third. She had lit up when Kouga arrived. He’d been passing through on his way to Kyoto, and he always made it a point to stop by.

“Thank god you’re here! I sat down and I immediately knew I wasn’t going to be able to get up on my own.”

They talked for a bit. Haruka had just turned eight, and someone-a demon? A rich man? Kouga couldn’t remember-had sent a bolt of cloth far too fine for a child’s robes, yet Kagome didn’t want to hold on to it for years, or merely resell it.

There had been a lull in the conversation, and Kagome had gone distant for a moment.

“Wow, I sound like a housewife.” She laughed. “I thought finishing school would make me something else, but I really am some kinda delinquent who got married right out of high school.”

Had the meeting stuck with him because it was odd, because he didn’t know what she meant by delinquent, or had it been rattling around his mind, waiting for this moment to jump out and bite him?

A grunt and a thud from inside the dressing room. Kouga snaps to attention.

“Everything alright in there?”

“Oh god,” Kagome giggles, “I might need some help.”

Kouga ducks past the curtain, and immediately starts laughing. Kagome got stuck trying to shimmy the skirt down her legs, and now she is sitting on the little dressing room bench, her legs pressed together and stuck straight out in front of her.

“Could you not laugh? I’m graduating in three days, I’m practically an adult, I’m-stop that!” Kagome whips her jacket at him, but Kouga dodges it, going to his knees to get a better grip on the dress. He peels it off of her, and drops it, inside out, on the dressing room floor.

Kagome sighs with relief and lets her legs fall open. Her breath hitches when Kouga runs his hand up her calf. He stops at the back of her knee, and the next thing he knows she’s hooked it over his shoulder. There’s glitter on her thighs, maybe from this dress, maybe from the last three.

Kouga’s heart is going a mile a minute, so hard his fingers are shaking.

How the fuck can going down on a girl in a mall be more exciting than all out fucking in the middle of the woods?

* * *

Something about an orgasm makes Kagome easier to please. She finds a simple yellow dress that actually suits her and the occasion. Finally they can to adjourn to the food court, the only good part of the mall, as far as Kouga is concerned. He refrains from getting something truly disgusting, just grabs some sauce heavy teriyaki and fried noddles.

Kagome picks at her milkshake like a kid coming down from a sugar high.

“Tired?”

Kagome blinks out of her reverie. “Ayame’s still around, right?”

Kouga’s heart jolts at her name. “Oh, yeah. Of course. She’s running her own pack right now, actually.” Not untrue.

Kagome picks up her straw wrapper and starts ripping it apart. “That’s nice.” She makes an attempt at a smile. “I guess I’ve just been thinking. It’s been like three hundred years. I kind of can’t believe…I mean, I guess we didn’t…I mean the past was a very long time ago…”

Kouga puts his hand over hers. He isn’t sure what she’s trying to say, but he has the gist. She wants to know how this can be possible. How the two of them can be here right now, together. No Ayame, no dog breath, nothing between them except a four by six formica table Kouga could plow through like a flamethrower over ice.

“It is pretty crazy,” Kouga says with a sheepish smile, “But you don’t have to go looking for a catch, Kagome. I love you, and being with you like this…trust me, it’s worth three hundred years.”

Kagome smiles at him, but there is a catch to it. It doesn’t bloom across her face like his favorite smiles. She looks like Ayame, mustering up a grin for something as paltry as decent takeout after a good long cry fest.

“I love you too,” She says softly. Her hand slides out from under his. “I guess I’m just down because I don’t think you should come to my graduation.”

Kouga nods. The words come like a blow, but he’s learned how not to flinch. And he needs to be kind and understanding where he knows dog brains isn’t. “Right. It’s awkward. I get it.” He gestures to the shopping bag at Kagome’s side. “At least I got to help with the best part.”

Kagome’s eyes widen, then she laughs. Is it a touch too loud and shrill in Kouga’s ears, but he laughs, too.

It’s wonderful, this feeling. The days after Kagome’s graduation, stretching out before them. Kouga feels expansive, as though his chest spreads further with each breath he takes. There are still so many obstacles-the pack’s take on his new marriage, where they will live, Kagome’s mortality-but those are tiny things, easy to size up from the peak of this mountain.

Kouga knows that the past must happen for him to exist in this future, but maybe there is more to it than that. Multiverse theory, the infinite nature of possibility, the hope which springs eternal in the breasts of humans and demons alike.

Kouga doesn’t go to Kagome’s graduation, he waits a day for her to settle, to understand her life after school, but he can’t wait a minute longer. He goes to her house bright and early on a beautiful, sunny spring day, one of those mild April days that trick you into thinking summer is just around the corner.

He skips up the steps towards the temple, and raps on Kagome’s door, rapid but hopefully not over eager.

Kagome’s mother answers. Her hair is freshly curled, probably for the graduation ceremony. Kouga beams at her.

“Good morning, ma’am. If it’s alright with you, I’d love to see your daughter.”

Mrs. Higurashi’s expression registers to Kouga at last. The sad furrow to her brow, the weight of the lines around her mouth.

“Oh dear, I thought you knew.”

Kouga flinches at her tone. It would fool a human, but he can hear the false note. Her emphasis ticks up on the wrong words.

“Kagome’s gone to live with some relatives in America. We’re not sure when exactly she’s coming back.”

“Bullshit,” Kouga spits, and takes off running. Mrs. Higurashi likely only sees him vanish, feels the wind in his wake.

Kouga bursts into the shabby little outbuilding. The rotting wooden doors give way under his hands. He leaps the steps to the well. It stinks of old wood and ancient decay, the reek of wet leaves and ruin.

He peers inside.

Nothing.

No magic hums from the structure. There is no sense that the well goes down, down, down, not stopping till one sees sky again.

That is what Kagome told him it was usually like when she showed it to him. He had felt it before.

Now it’s just a lump of a wood.

Kouga grips the edges hard, bent over like he may retch.

He hears careful footsteps on the stairs.

Mrs. Higurashi lays a hand on his shoulder. The scent of her permanent solution-so sharp it seems to singe the hair in Kouga’s nose-is momentarily overwhelmed by something soft and deep. The warm, milky scent of a mother, the rotting vegetation of grief.

Kouga knows this sadness is not born by him alone. Perhaps he doesn’t even deserve it. Mrs. Higurashi birthed and raised Kagome, never suspecting that the cozy life she gave her daughter in this modern city might be cast aside for some silver haired asshole who had the audacity to live hundreds of years ago.

Kouga walked into this with his eyes wide open. This shock, this sadness-he did it to himself.

Kouga turns around and bows to Mrs. Higurashi, stiff but deep. He straightens up again, searching for words. Their eyes meet, and words seem superfluous. An explanation would add nothing to their understanding.

“So long,” Kouga says. He walks to the steps down from the temple, then begins running.

He goes all the way to Hokkiado. Not for the joy of running. Not on any errand. Simply because the throb in his legs, the fire in his lungs, is the only thing that will stop him from lying down and sinking into despair. 

He means to howl once he reaches the shore, but when he finally arrives he has no breath to spare.


	9. Chapter 9

Wolf hierarchy is not as simple as people believe. It exists, but is not a strict chain, with an alpha at the top, and an omega at the bottom. Some wolves only rule a certain subset, some are submitted to under specific circumstances. It is as complex as any large group of interconnected humans.

Ayame does not have her own room because she is an alpha, but because she can stand the stench of it. The small room near the top of the house, crammed in next to an even smaller linen closet, is the Hokkaido equivalent of the apartment Kouga has been living in for the last few months. The birthing room, the honeymoon room, the laying out room. It is carefully cleaned between each event, but the smell lingers, faint as an old memory.

The window is covered by a thick shade, carefully cropped so that it is big enough to keep out light, but not the stiff breeze coming off the ocean. Ayame is bundled up under layers of furs, reading by the yellow-orange light of the single lamp.

Kouga slides the door open and shut in smooth, silent motions. He approaches her on his knees. He does not meet her eyes, out of mixed fear and deference. His clothes still smell of the ocean and his own sweat.

He bows low at the edge of the futon, his hands pressed to the floor just before it.

He waits. At this point he cannot rise without her permission, and he can not say he expects it soon.

She may leave him here for days.

He can accept that.

Ayame sighs. Then, the soft sound of shifting blankets, the faint rustle of paper.

She’s naked. And she’s been bathing in the ocean. She smells only of herself, slightly adulterated by salt water. The smell is so familiar Kouga’s heart twinges like an over-stretched muscle. He wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck, find the spot he swears has been worn down to match the shape of his profile.

More shuffling. Her feet come into view as she steps into a pair of sweatpants. Kouga’s heartbeat kicks up. He can’t say why, perhaps in response to a subtle shift in her breathing or aura, but he senses what is coming next.

Ayame plops back down on her bed, cross-legged. She fists her hand in the hair at the back of Kouga’s head, raises it, then slams it back down.

She stops his face a hair from the ground. He does not resist. Exile is not the worst thing that can happen to someone who is estranged from their pack. If it reaches the point where someone must be officially expelled, it’s usually easier for all parties involved to simply kill them and be done with it.

They say it takes three people to kill someone without a trace. Ayame has ten times that, all willing to kill, die, and lie for her.

Kouga numbers among them.

That doesn’t mean his heart isn’t hammering in his ears as he breathes the shallow air not an inch above the tatami mats. But he does take his uncrushed face as a kindness.

Ayame’s hand slides free of his hair.

“Sit up.”

He does so, knees folded underneath him though he despises the posture. The low light brings out the age in Ayame’s face. He remembers it like it was yesterday, but it truly was a long time ago that he carried her back up that mountain.

He wishes he understood the meaning in her gaze as she studies him.

“You are no longer the leader of this pack.”

Kouga hangs his head, not out of any pretense of submission, but as a natural reaction to the shame rising in his chest. He carried this pack through war, plague, famine and fire. He should at least fight Ayame for the title, but he doesn’t even think he has that right.

Ayame pulls a knee up to her chest. “Everyone knows that, of course-“ The _of course_ stings- “-but we need to show them.”

“I understand.” Kouga stares at the sheets, unable to meet her eyes. The spray of blankets and bank of mattress look so soft and inviting in sharp contrast with the hard floor he kneels upon.

Ayame stands. “Come on.”

She leads Kouga down the hallway to the porch. The beach is distantly visible, as well as the sea beyond. Kouga barely looks at them except to ascertain that the stretch of bluish white sand and dark water is still there. The tides have not shifted, the world turns on. He tends to find humans, racing through their short time, to be inconsequential, but now he remembers that we all are.

“Strip.”

_It’s not that cold,_ Kouga tells himself, but it is January, and there’s a sharp breeze coming off the water. Ayame disappears back into the house, and Kouga’s toes are numb before she returns. She places a warm palm on his shoulder and turns him to the ocean. His back is ramrod straight, but despite his control a shiver runs down his spine as her claws graze his neck.

“Hold this,” Ayame says, and over Kouga’s shoulder she hands him a paper bag and the remains of his queue.

Kouga blinks. Now he can feel the longer strands she missed tickling his neck. This is his punishment?

A buzzing noise picks up behind him, and he recognizes the tone of Hakkaku’s electric razor, a tool he has more than once extolled the virtues of when shaping his mohawk.

Hair slithers down Kouga’s shoulders. It only takes a few minutes for his fine, long hair, to become garbage scattered over the porch. Ayame hands him a dust pan and brush. She leans against the railing as Kouga carefully sweeps it up and puts it all in the bag. Hair is almost as good as blood for curses. No matter how hurt Ayame is, she too is afraid of what might happen if Kouga’s hair fell into the wrong hands.

Kouga straightens up and Ayame snatches the bag from his chilled fingers. She rolls it up and sticks it in her waistband. “Thanks.”

Kouga trails her back into the house. His head is off balance without his hair, his movements a bit too forceful without the weight to hold him back. When he touches his skull he is grateful that she left a layer of fuzz a bit too thick to be a buzzcut. At least he won’t look stupid.

Ayame waits while Kouga returns the dustpan to its proper place, and he takes that as a sign to continue following her as she returns to her room. She closes the door behind him, and he learns how small her bedroom is. She cannot move but brush against him, or at least near enough that he feels the heat radiating from her skin. His cheeks and toes tingle as they warm, and though it should feel good, the sensation is disorienting, as though he’s melting. He clenches his fists to make sure they are still solid.

Ayame takes her shirt off and tosses it on top of the small chest of drawers against one wall. She puts Kouga’s hair in one of the drawers. She doesn’t even attempt to hide it because Kouga knows trying to steal it back would end this-this-kindness? Stay of execution? He has no desire to find out what he'd be ruining.

“Um,” Kouga says, searching for further orders. Is he meant to stand guard over her while she sleeps? His clothes are still a crumpled heap on the porch, and he’d rather not be a naked sentry.

Ayame, sitting on her bed, blinks up at him, slow and cool, like a cat.

“Well?” She says, and pats the space next to her.

Kouga stares dumbly for a moment before he remembers that it’s rude to look a gift horse in the mouth. He burrows beneath the blankets, grateful for their comfort against his tender skin. He does feel like he’s melting as Ayame’s warmth spreads across him. It is a good feeling. Something is easing inside him, a tight coil slowly unfurling.

Ayame reaches over him and switches off the light.

They lay on their sides, facing each other, knees brushing. They used to always assume this pose when they were younger, when sharing a bed was new to them. They used to watch each other, pretending each nudge of skin on skin was accidental, that their desire was something simmering far away at the back of their minds rather than a roaring tension building between them. Their ears would be pricked, waiting until the cave, or camp, or house, grew quiet, when the hour was not so much good, but polite.

He watches Ayame’s eyes trace his face. They are still green in this light, he can catch the color even now. He knows every inch of her, could recognize her words if she penned them anonymously, could pick her voice from a chorus of thousands.

Kouga will make this up to her. He has sworn that to himself. He can not say it to her yet, cannot burden her with his pleas for forgiveness, with an expectation that soon he will accomplish such a great deed that she will forget he ever wronged her in the first place. He will make this right, little by little, every day for the next hundred years if that is what it takes. He has the time. He will make this his destiny.

Ayame’s soft voice dents the silence. “Why did you do something this fucking stupid?”

“Wouldn’t you do something this stupid for love?”

The sadness in Ayame’s eyes is beyond tears, something that has settled into her bones.

“Why do you think I’ve let you come back?”


End file.
